• Jasper White’s Corn Chowder

    Jasper White’s Corn Chowder

    Recipes, sometimes, are like dreams. You experience them but then, quite often, you forget that you’ve experienced them. And then you’re standing somewhere, and the memory floods back to you: “I was being chased by a gorilla through Filene’s Basement!” Or, in this case, “I once made a corn chowder so good that I wrote…

  • A Summer Feast for Todd and Jim

    A Summer Feast for Todd and Jim

    So remember that time that Jim Parsons and his partner Todd Spiewak made my rainbow cookie cake for Jesse Tyler Ferguson and his partner Justin Mikita? Well, since then, Jim and I have been e-mailing and trying to figure out a time for him and Todd to come over for dinner. We finally picked a…

  • End-of-Summer Plum Cobbler

    End-of-Summer Plum Cobbler

    It’s time to face facts: summer’s almost over. At least summer in the sense of kids not being in school (most of them have already gone back) and summer blockbusters (I didn’t want to see “Guardians of the Galaxy” but someone told me there’s a talking tree in it so now I do) and summer…

  • The Best Fried Chicken of Your Life

    The Best Fried Chicken of Your Life

    Give me credit. It’s been a while since I’ve declared something “the best ___ of your life.” There is, of course, the broccoli, which brought all of you to my blog in the first place. Then there’s the chili which, as far as I’m concerned, has never been topped. The brownies remain unrivaled and the…

  • Food That Makes You Happy, Food That Makes You Healthy, Food That Makes You Hot

    Food That Makes You Happy, Food That Makes You Healthy, Food That Makes You Hot

    The original plan was for me to take my shirt off. I know, you’re all drooling on to your keyboards at the thought, but settle down! I needed a goal, something to motivate me to get into shape. This was in February. I rejoined my old L.A. gym, Crunch, which makes absolutely no sense because…

  • Sweet Summer Corn with Bacon and Balsamic Onions

    Sweet Summer Corn with Bacon and Balsamic Onions

    Becoming a good cook is a little bit like becoming a good musician: at a certain point, you can glance at a recipe–the way a pianist might glance at a piece of sheet music–and know what it’s going to taste like, just like the pianist knows what it’s going to sound like. That’s a real…

  • The Best Way To Cook Farro

    The Best Way To Cook Farro

    Talking about the best way to cook farro is a bit like talking about the best place to have a colonoscopy; useful information, perhaps, but not anything to get excited about. Hey, I shared your feelings until I had the privilege of cooking with the great American chef Suzanne Goin at the LA Times Book…

  • Scrambled Eggs with Sausage, Tomatoes, & Pecorino

    Scrambled Eggs with Sausage, Tomatoes, & Pecorino

    My grandfather, who celebrated his birthday this week (Happy Birthday, Grandpa!), reads my blog on his Kindle only he can’t see anything past the jump. (We’ve tried to fix it; can’t figure it out.) So as a birthday treat for him, here’s a whole post in one paragraph. It’s a recipe I came up with…

  • Casual Crostata

    Casual Crostata

    If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know I tend to make a huge stink about pie dough. How I can’t roll it out, how I don’t have the magic touch (like Craig’s dad), how even after learning all of the rules–keep things cold, move the dough around as you roll it–it rarely…

  • Chicken with Plums, Zucchini with Almonds

    Chicken with Plums, Zucchini with Almonds

    A few times now I’ve mentioned the technique of searing a chicken breast–skin-on, bone-in–in a skillet with hot olive oil, skin-side down, flipping it over when golden brown, finishing it in the oven, removing it from the pan and making a sauce with the brown bits on the bottom, something to deglaze those brown bits,…